Which is deeply inconvenient.
“Right,” I say, pushing away from the counter. “Handover in ten. Nobody frighten the day shift before I’ve had the chance to look professional.”
Kev gestures at me with his breakfast. “We are always professional.”
Mish looks at his bowl. “You’re eating cereal with a fork.”
AJ gives a tired laugh into his mug, and I make the mistake of looking at him as he does it.
His smile is slower when he is this tired.
Softer.
Less protected by all that quickness.
I look away first.
“Ten minutes,” I say again, and head towards the office.
I am halfway down the corridor before I hear footsteps behind me.
I know it is him before he speaks.
“Pippa?”
I stop near the office door and turn.
AJ is a few feet away, mug still in one hand, expression suddenly a little more careful than it was in the kitchen.
The corridor is quiet around us. Not private in any dramatic sense. There are people moving elsewhere, doors open, voices carrying faintly from the kitchen. But we are out of the line of fire.
Out of the audience.
“Yes?”
“I was going to grab breakfast after handover,” he says. “Before I attempt to sleep through daylight like a confused vampire.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“And I wondered if you’d let me buy you some.”
He does not do the polished thing. No easy grin for the room. No charming tilt of his head designed to turn the question into something I can laugh away.
There is humour there, because he is still AJ, and apparently removing that would require medical intervention.
But there is no pressure.
No performance.
Just him, tired and careful, asking me when nobody else can make it into a joke before I decide what I want.
“Breakfast,” I say.
“Yes.”
“To say thank you?”
“That was the official version I prepared.”
